Eugene I. wrote: ↑Mon May 16, 2022 1:39 am
Steiner wrote:
For this research is not based on speculation, on a day dreaming in terms of mere concepts, but on actual spiritual experience.
There is no argument that the Steiner's paradigm is based on spiritual experience.
The argument is whether or not all spiritual/conscious experiences are entirely reducible to the ideal content. If yes (which seems to be a premise of Steiner's paradigm), then all there is to the world is only the self-experiencing-living-Idea. The alternative version (which is more appropriate to call "consciousness-realism") is that the infinite richness of conscious experiences is irreducible to any ideal content of it.
No one is making that underlined argument, and we keep trying to explain why, but you keep substituting the responses out in exchange for what you call 'Platonism' and 'Absolute Idealism', and even your conceptions of those have nothing to do with the argument being made. Nothing can be reduced to anything else and the intellect simply cannot grasp the Triune existence of WFT. This doesn't mean we can't speak about it, but we must be perfectly clear and precise that we are only using metaphors to point towards it.
We cannot understand Beauty, for ex., through concepts, only through experience. That is generally true of all aspects of human existence, but it's easiest to see here. All existential values of man - truth, wisdom, beauty, goodness, freedom, etc. - are ones which unfold through us in the process of becoming who we are. We are only at the very dawn of this process. As the physical age of humanity grows older, the spiritual age grows younger, until we are finally re-birthed into the higher worlds (assuming we sieze hold of the opportunity to do so, which every individual has today).
Without the ability to communicate the actual experience, an ability which none of us have, we can only try to indirectly approach these things with our concepts. What is an example of something universally considered beautiful? It's tough to say these days, since there is so much cynicism of anything spiritual. How about Beethoven's symphonies? I know there are many people today, probably younger people, who think classical music is old trash and prefer the mechanized beats of EDM. There is a real battle reflected here - our culture has been tending towards the materialization of everything spiritual and we should pay close attention, as it is accelerating rapidly. Nevertheless, I am sure most here agree on this music being beautiful in a very high sense.
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The polyrhythm of the following example occurs in the ‘Eroica.’ No ear can analyze the plenitude of contrasts although it can experience it audially. In our enjoyment of music we employ levels of capacity far in advance of our organic development. The musical work of art [since Beethoven] permits us to establish capacities in practice enabling us to intuit subsequent man and his reality. It points once again to the absurdity of the old adage 'nothing is new under the sun’ invoked to discredit the limitless drive of creativity.”
- Hermann Scherchen, On the Essence of Music (1946)
We really come to a crossroads here. People speak of imagination, inspiration, intuition, as above, but who understands these as modes of cognition that we can harness consciously, as we do with the intellect? Thinking cannot be conceptualized any more than Feeling/Beauty or Willing/Goodness. It is what does the conceptualizing, but it is not identical to that conceptualizing. None of them can be reduced to anything else. "Thinking" or "Ideation" is simply our word to conceptually describe that which allows us to bring the 'future' into the present now, i.e. to integrate experiential states of being which are subconscious in the manner Cleric has been outlining in recent posts. It is what allows us to perceive 'subsequent man', to become who we are through ever-expanding spheres of experience. How do we try to anticipate the future today during normal conditions of our existence?
Simple, we "think". In science, we think through fragmented perceptions to discern the meaningful laws and principles which unite them and thereby 'predict the future', i.e. integrate more states of being into our present pallette. When we move from secular science which only studies outer perceptions to the world of inner perceptions, however, suddenly whatever we are doing - which we designate with the word "thinking" - no longer applies. We are suddenly cynical and skeptical, demanding "proof" it can be done beyond any reasonable doubt before we endeavor to actually do it. The reason we question it to such an extent before doing it is because, if it can be done, we are forced into an uncomfortable position - we are suddenly responsible for the World's unfoldment in a very real and immanent way. Our seemingly "private" inner experience is not so private anymore, and our inner desires, feelings, and thoughts begin to matter just as much as throwing a punch to someone's face
Ironically and tragically, it is the irrational denial of this possibility that ensures experience will stagnate and contract for those who choose material and intellectual convenience over adaptation and evolution; who choose the love of worldly pleasures over the Love of the eternally flowing Spirit which manifests itself in all art forms and their
shared meaning. By doing so, we sow the seeds of the very thing we are most afraid of, i.e. the contracting novelty and richness of experience, which many people dimly refer to now as the 'meaning crisis'. If meaning was something personal and private, then there would be no crisis to speak of. There is no need for this crisis to worsen on the descending trajectory it is on, though. It is an entirely self-inflicted wound. None of this is about 'escaping' the planet - exactly the opposite. The Earth is
our Home and our Mother - she gives birth to these spiritual capacities within us and therefore
we are responsible for ensuring her full potential is manifested by bringing those capacities to fruition.